


Forging Smiths

by Only_1_Truth



Category: Original Work
Genre: 'capture the flag' with agents is always dangerous, Gen, Inspired by 00Q fandom, Spies & Secret Agents, The underdog always gets whumped a bit, Todd just wants to survive, Todd might resemble Q and Brun might resemble James Bond, Training Camp, Whump, and maybe a family would be good, when you hack a spy organization they recruit you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 17:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11086722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: When Todd Howell hacks the Organization (the Canadian equivalent of MI6) at the age of eighteen, he expects to be sent to jail - or at the very least, a juvenile detention facility.  Instead, he's inducted into the world of up-and-coming spies, where fully fledged agents are called Smiths, and the strongest are called Blacksmiths... and, as far as Todd can tell, the weak are called Whitesmith.Todd is a Whitesmith.  And he can't quite, because he's too dangerous for the Organization to leave him to his own devices.He just hopes that he'll survive...





	Forging Smiths

**Author's Note:**

> So one of my professors asked me to write a short-story... if any of you know my writing, you know that I don't _do_ short. So I decided that if I was going to be forced to write under 5000 words (you'll notice I failed at that), I'd at least write about what I wanted: spies. My prof doesn't know that I write 00Q in my spare time, so it was fun to have a Q-ish character and a 007-ish character without explicitly saying so ;) Enjoy!

The game was simple.  Capture one of the Organization’s fully-fledged agents, and you were elevated to the fast-track.  No more grunt-work, and one step closer to becoming a full Smith.  It was like a high-stakes, city-wide game of capture-the-flag, only the “flag” had at least a full year of espionage training as either a Whitesmith or a Blacksmith, and if they realized a newbie was hunting them, they’d either run you ragged or leave you strung up by your ankles in the subway like some unfortunate villain in a Spiderman movie.  Sometimes, just to give the trainees an edge, the Organization would neglect to tell the Smith that they were the target of the day, but that sometimes ended in blood.  Chasing down a fully-aware assassin-spy through downtown Toronto was undoubtedly harder than hunting an _oblivious_ one, but catching a Smith by surprise was a quick way to pit your fight-or-flight responses against theirs – at which point you hoped you were in a populated area with witnesses, or that the Smith was at least wearing a suit they didn’t want to get bloody.

Todd Howell, nineteen and part of the newest batch of spy-hopefuls, was mostly just hoping to survive the experience.  Considering how narrowly he was surviving his own peers thus far and the debacle that had put him in the program in the first place, he wasn’t getting his hopes up.  The entrance exams – which Todd had never taken – caught a wide variety of applicants, all ostensibly useful to the Organization, although they were steadily and ruthlessly whittled down until only a few small teams were left.  At that point, they were designated as either Whitesmiths or Blacksmiths, and so far as Todd could tell, the only differentiating factor between the groups was that Blacksmiths were tough enough to survive the program.  His team had started out with an equal number either category, but now Todd was the only Whitesmith on his six-person team - and spent most of his down-time either nursing bruises or wishing that the year 2025 had come with the discovery of time-travel.  What he wouldn’t give not to go back to his former self and tell young-Todd to keep his nose out of the business of a government spy organization. 

  ~^~

_The police interrogation room felt sterilized, like a grimmer version of a doctor’s office, and it felt too small even for the slender boy of eighteen hunched down over the table’s far edge.  Todd Howell, youngest of five children and on the verge of graduating high school.  Mediocre student with an increasing penchant for acting out.  An interest in computers that would have taken him far despite all else, if he hadn’t decided to hack into government files._

_A woman sat across from him, eyeing the dark, quick, frightened eyes of the boy who’d almost gotten away with it.  Which was saying something._

_“Why did you do it?” the woman asked, her voice quiet, her mind on the files that sat like feathers beneath her hand: cool yet alive, whispering a story of too much talent.  Too much talent to waste; too much talent to just let fly free._

_Todd’s eyes flicked down; a tongue darted out to wet nervous lips.  The woman watched the way his narrow shoulders clenched for a moment before loosening into a shrug.  “I wanted to stand out, I guess,” he finally spoke down to where his hands were cuffed to the tabletop.  Hands like his were dangerous, in the present technological world._

_Hands like that had to be either put to use or cut off, so after just a few more minutes, the woman got up and went out to Todd’s family, explaining to them that their son could avoid having this on his records if he went to a “reform school” with her.  Mr. and Mrs. Howell, frazzled with one daughter in college, one son dropping out, another son asking for a loan so that he could become a successful business man, and another child moving home after failing to become a successful businessman, just nodded, seeing an easy escape from the trouble their youngest son had just caused.  Half an hour later and Todd’s whole desperate bid for attention had been swept under the rug like a hairball, and he was being transported to where his skills could be kept under a watchful eye – and maybe put to good use._  

~^~

When trainees were sent to test their skills on a fully-trained Smith, up-and-coming spies like Todd were matched up with another teammate for the task.  Their instructor for the event –  Lois Smith, the same woman to recruit him, with her eyes like jade knives and a build like an otter, all sleek power – had told them with a frown that these teams _usually_ included one Whitesmith and one Blacksmith.  Todd wondered how any Whitesmiths survived long enough for this rule to be regularly feasible, because everyone in his cohort had quickly gotten the idea that “Whitesmith” was synonymous with “too weak to live.”  Their instructors had explained that Whitesmiths had more “cerebral” expertise, but Todd had had three months to become very, very jealous of the more physical capabilities of the Blacksmiths.  He’d been told that fully-fledged Smiths included both categories, but it hardly seemed possible, and not even Lois had told whether she was a Blacksmith or a Whitesmith – like a woman not revealing her age. 

Feeling like a fox amidst wolves, Todd now took Mrs. Smith’s pensive look with a sort of fatalistic acceptance, and didn’t flinch too badly when he was put on Greg Kowalski’s team.  He heard her talk about how Kowalski was lucky to have their one remaining Whitesmith on his team, but it all washed over him, sounding about as real as his parent’s promises to spend more time with him. 

The other Whitesmith’s in Todd’s cohort hadn’t just washed out; they’d been bullied out.  Greg would probably kill him in this exercise, but Todd took that with a grain of salt: just about anyone in the program had come close to hospitalizing him in the past month.  Next time he felt undervalued at home, he told himself (if he ever made it home), he promised himself that he’d act out in ways less likely to get him noticed by the government. 

~^~

_Todd’s cohort didn’t know that he’d gotten into the program via the penal system rather than more kosher means.  At first, the skinny boy with the quick hands had thought that he’d get some acceptance here, for the same skills that had gotten him here in the first place, but instead acceptance came with the label “Whitesmith,” which seemed synonymous with “weakest link.”  Their instructors kept telling them otherwise, but it hadn’t worked, and by three weeks in, Todd was one of three Whitesmiths left when they all entered the Maze for training.  The Maze was actually a massive, gutted warehouse, naked and bare except for the laser lighting that broke the room up into ever-changing, labyrinthine paths – on the catwalk above, Lois Smith and another spy, Brun Smith, watched like itinerant gods on high.  When off-mission, they trained the next generation._

_Today, they’d be watching to see who could make it through the maze either by navigating the path or dodging the lasers, because if one of the beams of light was broken, someone clearly didn’t have enough dexterity or acrobatic skill to pass the test.  Todd didn’t think he had either of those things, but he’d been allowed to bring in his pad, and was hunched over it now, running a program._

_“They call him ‘Brutal,’ you know that, right?” Andy, another one of Todd’s teammates, was likewise having a hard time navigating the maze of violet lights. “Hey, did you hear me, Howell?”_

_This wasn’t a team activity, and last time they’d sparred, Andy had nearly broken his nose.  Trying to focus on what he was doing, Todd murmured back, “Who are you talking about?”_

_“Brun Smith.  Tall, dark, scary as fuck?” Andy nodded above them.  “I hear he’s on missions all the time because they don’t think it’s safe to keep him in the country.”_

_Something on Todd’s screen blinked, and a spark of triumph lit like a star behind his sternum.  There were other ways to beat this maze other than contorting past moving lasers.  “So?  He’s here now.”_

_“Yeah, but you know what else I heard?”  Todd shook his head, on the verge of hacking the laser system an disabling it entirely.  The rest of his teammates were slowly being disqualified by cotton-candy-hued beams of light, or hanging back and delaying the inevitable like Andy._

_Todd missed what Andy said next, and also made the mistake of thinking he was less dangerous just because he was running his mouth.  Everyone here was cutthroat, and Todd wasn’t an asset, he was a rung to climb over on the metaphorical ladder of success.  The only warning he got was Andy’s annoyed, “Are you even_ listening _?” before Andy’s elbow shot out, and connected hard with Todd’s ribs – hard enough to knock him off-balance even as his pad gnawed through the last firewalls around the laser-light program.  It all became a moot point a second later as the pad hit the ground with a crack, and Todd stumbled through half a dozen beams of light before tripping and landing on his knees with a crack._

 _Andy was standing where he was, looking cheekily triumphant.  The room’s lighting was insane, so Todd doubted anyone had noticed the foul-play, but he wondered briefly if Andy would be stupid enough to kick him while he was down with two Smiths watching and lasers in the way.  All Andy wanted to do was finish his discussion, though, “I_ said _that Brun has to teach with Lois, because the last time he was a target, he nearly maimed every student sent after him.  They say he just doesn’t care.  That’s why they call him Brutal.”  Andy flashed a smile even as a laser shifted and skimmed a harmless dot across Todd’s middle, like a sniper-sight looking for a target, “Maybe he’ll catch you in a dark hallway one of these days and put you out of your misery.”  Andy turned back to the maze, dismissing Todd._

_Shaken and angry, Todd grimaced then just lay down on the floor, wanting to just molder where he was, his ego steeping in its own bruises.  After a moment, though, he pushed himself up to go and find his pad.  He was disqualified, but at least he could check to see that the thing wasn’t broken.  He heard an angry shout as someone else got caught in the moving light-maze, and had to narrow his own eyes as the beams passed him by.  He thought that his pad had slid across the floor back towards where they’d started, a lightless patch of black, and he nearly startled out of his skin when he looked up from the floor to see someone standing by the doors: Brun Smith, looking capable and dangerous despite the silver in his hair and crows-feet around his grey eyes.  He’d also managed to disappear and reappear from the catwalk like a ghost, and with Andy’s story still fresh on his mind, it made the smaller trainee involuntarily cower._

_Brun stayed where he was, lit eerily by the display of lasers, jacket and jeans doing little to hide a musculature that could snap a person in half.  It was really his eyes that gave him away, though: calculating, cold, piercingly accipitrine as he tilted his head like a peregrine over something curious.  Brutal indeed.  “Looking for this, trainee?” he asked, voice deceptively unassuming.  The kind of voice that got him into a mark’s house without them seeing the danger beneath the small smile he was wearing, a smile that Todd noticed never quite warmed his eyes.  He had Todd’s pad in one hand, screen cracked but still glowing._

_Feeling a shiver of warning go down his spine, Todd stayed where he was.  Brutal didn’t come any closer, though, and merely watched with lidded eyes.  “Yes,” Todd answered.  Hesitantly, he outstretched a hand, hoping the lights hid how it was shaking.  “Can I have it back?”_

_For a moment, Brutal just stared at him, eyes as unreadable as reflective stones set in his face.  Then, with another disarming and shallow smile, he said, “Actually, I’m going to hang on to this,” and turned to head back out the door.  Todd’s hacking program continued to run across the screen, making Todd wonder if he’d just made his own life worse._

~^~

Greg Kowalski and Todd Howell were loosed on the city of Toronto at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, and told to hunt down a newly appointed spy named Sam Smith.  Already he was gathering a respectable record, and while Greg seemed eager to begin the game of “espionage tag,” Todd felt wariness like a rime of frost upon his skin.  At least the Organization had assured them that Sam Smith was aware of his part in the game, so they wouldn’t have to worry about being mistaken for enemy operatives, and summarily thrashed until credentials were shown. 

Part of Todd worried about catching a fully-trained Smith, but more of him worried about being metaphorically roped to one of his most disagreeable teammates.  He weighed the likelihood of being pushed in front of a car, and looked around them at the bustling foot-traffic for possible witnesses who could call 911 for him if needed. 

“Keep up or drop out, Howell,” Greg snapped, nearly downed out by the city-sounds flocked around them.  As soon as he said the words, the young man disappeared into the burgeoning city crowd, seeming to take off at random.  Todd, who wondered if Greg knew something he didn’t about the location of their target, took a second before weaving after him. 

“Where are you going?” he made himself ask, biting back a more barbed question, which sounded more like, ‘ _Do you have a fucking clue where you’re going_?’

“After Smith.  What do you think?”

“How do you know where he is?”

“I don’t – but I’m going to find him.  That’s the point of this, isn’t it?” Greg snapped back, and this time gave Todd a shove.  The smaller trainee swayed with the impact, pursing his lips and trying to remain patient. 

He tried to remain patient for the next two hours as Greg’s own particular brand of logic took them across the city and back.  It was like following a beagle with a broken nose, and all attempts on Todd’s part to step in were either ignored or rebuffed.  No one particular respected Todd’s “Whitesmith” skills, and having been gotten into this mess for those very skills, Todd didn’t really either, but anything seemed better than Greg’s illogical meandering. 

“Greg,” Todd tried for about the hundredth time, this time reaching forward to grab the other’s sleeve in an attempt to get him to listen, “We’re not going to find Sam Smith this way, and when we do, we’ll be too exhausted to catch him.  Come on, let’s stop and think about this.  I can-”

Greg shook the hand off, and the look he sent back was afire with frustration that made Todd tense, wary.  Besides learning self-defense, agility, and polishing his hacking skills, Todd had learned any variety of signs that meant he was about to get bullied for being the more brains than brawn.  Once bitten, twice shy, the saying went, so Todd found himself backing up slowly.  Greg glowered at him with fists clenched. 

“You were saying, Howell?” Greg questioned lowly. 

Todd didn’t answer to say that he could try and track Sam Smith’s phone.  When Greg turned around to get moving again, Todd didn’t follow, and Greg didn’t turn around to check either. 

“Shit,” Todd hissed shakily a few seconds later, feeling like he just dodged a bullet – only to step in front of another.  He was definitely going to fail the test now, since his partner had ditched him, and almost attacked him besides.  He thought of home, not for the first time: there, he’d been so ignored it had made him sick, but at least they hadn’t ever threatened him.  Taking deep breaths and trying to will away the adrenalin fizzing through his veins, making his limbs shake, Todd dragged a hand down over his face… and repeated, “ _Shit_ ,” with more feeling.  He could just give up.  He didn’t think that he could actually get kicked out of the program – he was too dangerous to just let roam free.  Maybe, though, if he failed at this, they’d find some other way to use his skills without letting him get into trouble again…

It was tempting.  And for about half a minute, Todd considered his options while people passed him by like he didn’t exist.  It was that feeling of nonexistence that made him clench his jaw again, because even if his cohort wanted to weed him out, at least they paid attention to him.   

Todd fisted his hands and lifted his head.  He couldn’t just let it end with that idiot Greg walking away from him and dooming them both.  Pulling out his phone and immediately opening programs that he probably wasn’t supposed to even have access to, much less know how to run, Todd took a deep breath and plunged into the early lunch crowd thickening the sidewalk like blood down a vein.  He’d never met Sam Smith, but he knew that the Organization provided their agents’ phones, and that was the only hint Todd needed to start him on his hunt.  It took another fifteen minutes, but he found a signal that he was pretty sure had to be Sam Smith’s and activated its GPS remotely.  Target acquired even if he had no idea what he’d do when he found the Smith, Todd turned down a less crowded street to make better time. 

Todd didn’t see the shape explode quietly out of the alleyway as he passed it, just felt a hand clamp over his mouth.  Another coiled around his middle, dragging him swiftly and efficiently out of sight of the midday crowd.  It all happened with the nearly unreal speed of an eel snaking out of its hole, retreating with its catch so quickly that no one recalled the fish being there to begin with.  Todd struggled, but the arms around him weren’t made of the adolescent strength of growing youths.  They were muscled with unbreakable strength that didn’t yield even as Todd clawed at them.  Panicked, panting harshly through his nose, Todd tried to elbow back, but the body behind him absorbed the blow. 

The hand pressed flush over his mouth gave his whole head a rough shake, enough to rattle him and slow his struggles momentarily.  In that dazed second, he heard a familiar, low voice murmur quite calmly, “Easy, boy.  This is just a exercise, remember?”

The hands released and Todd spun away with a shocked gasp of breath.  Feeling like the ground had fallen out from under him, he backed up until the hit the alley’s far wall, staring at Brutal Smith from two garbage-strewn meters away.  The agent looked as he had at the Maze: calm, unflappable, and unashamedly deadly in the same understated way that a butterfly knife was.  The older man blinked at Todd calmly, seeming intent to wait for Todd to calm down. 

“What are you doing here?  What-?”  Todd cut himself off, shaking his head, at loss as to how to rationalize this.  He still half-expected Brutal to rush him, and didn’t know what he’d do, because the man was damn fast, and no less strong.  Todd doubted that even other Smiths could stand up to Brutal, and Todd wasn't even in his league.

But the dark-haired man just blinked once, benignly.  “After seeing how you’ve been handling training, I figured that I’d follow you, just in case.”

Something in Todd settled, congealed, and grew ugly.  He was suddenly less afraid of Brutal and more angry, and felt fury like a cold cut across his belly.  “Because you pitied me after what happened at the Maze,” he guessed. 

“Wrong,” Brutal murmured back, surprisingly unoffended.  And then he smiled.  It was unsettling, like watching a wolf peel back its gums.  “I perhaps pitied you when your teammate pushed you-”  Todd blinked, surprised that that had been noticed.  “-But I stopped pitying you when I saw what you had on your pad.”  Brutal cocked his head, the gesture again making him look less human and more animal in some subtle way.  “Hacking like that will take you far.”

“It hasn’t so far,” Todd pointed out.

There was that smile again, showing a hint of canines.  Ignoring the grumbled comment, Brutal said, “Think of me as being here to even the odds.  There’s a reason why a Whitesmith is supposed to be paired with a Blacksmith – without both, you’ll never win.”  Brutal shrugged, adding, “Anyone not teamed with you is screwed.”

Todd couldn’t believe that, but for some reason kept listening, riveted, because Smiths weren’t talkers – and Brutal seemed in a class all his own – but he was talking now. 

“How would you describe a Whitesmith?” Brutal demanded.

“Weaker,” Todd whispered automatically.

“Wrong.  Whitesmiths are subtler.  Smarter.  You find targets for Blacksmiths to take out.  Ergo…”  Brutal looked in the general direction of where Todd had lost Kowalski, his gaze eminently dismissive, like a cat looking at a scrap of rotten meat that was beneath it.  “…You’re supposed to complete this task with a Whitesmith working with a Blacksmith, but your Blacksmith is clearly dysfunctional.”  Brutal folded his arms, looking expectant.  “I’m a Blacksmith, so let’s try this again, Todd.  You’re going to be a Whitesmith someday – so do your job.  Lead the way.  I’ll follow.”

~^~

It was twenty-four hours later and Todd was still coming down from the adrenalin-high, sitting alongside his fellow trainees as they all got lectured on what had been – with one exception – failed Smith-hunts.  Lois Smith prowled in front of them, looking frustrated, but also looking faintly murderous as she glanced at the one other Smith in attendance: Brutal.  Instead of joining her in a professorial fashion, he was sitting slouched amidst the trainees.  In fact, his seat was right behind Todd’s, and he kept idly tapping his foot against the back of Todd’s chair.

“The Organization recognizes that this test is difficult, but it is unprecedented for an entire team to fail at even locating a Smith – with one exception,” Mrs. Smith berated, slicing an absolutely incendiary look in Brutal… and Todd’s… direction.  Todd had actually found their target – at which point Brutal had slid in like a shark to blood to play his part. Sam Smith hadn’t stood a chance, although he hadn’t been too roughed up by the end. 

“Needless to say,” Lois Smith went on, “all of you have shown a distinct lack of the skills necessary for advancement.  You shall continue training at this level until the next test.”  The female agent’s eyes slid to Todd, and he sunk lower in his chair as everyone else looked at him, with varying looks of awe and jealousy.  Mrs. Smith simply said, “Mr. Howell as well, since his success was due to a violation of the rules.”

Just as Todd breathed easier – glad not to be singled out – he heard a throat clear behind him.  This time, when Brun Smith spoke, it was in a voice that befit his nickname: thunder-low and brutal.  “And how exactly was his test any less a breaking of the rules than anyone else’s?”

Lois blinked.  “Excuse me?”

Brutal continued with calmness like an incoming storm, “The test is supposed to include a Whitesmith and a Blacksmith working in tandem – Todd’s Blacksmith wouldn’t play-”  Kowalski shrunk in the background.  “-And no one else even _got_ a Whitesmith.”  Everyone blinked, nonplussed, so Brutal continued, “It was a rigged game.”  The blinks got more confused, so Brutal sighed heavily and this time kicked Todd’s chair hard enough that he nearly fell out of it, and everyone stared.  “No one could win this game without a Whitesmith – without _Todd_.  This is half the Organization’s fault, for not giving you an even ratio.  Or teaching you a single fucking thing about Whitesmiths to begin with.”

“That’s enough, Brun,” the Smith at the front of the room cautioned. 

Her request was ignored.  “Of course, seeing as all of you seemed intent on killing your Whitesmiths, perhaps it’s good you weren’t trusted with more.”

“They had to learn that the hard way.  Now, are you done?”

“Teach them why Blacksmith brawn will never get anywhere without Whitesmith brains, and then I’ll be done,” Brutal said.  With that, he left the room.  His hand rested briefly on Todd’s shoulder as he left.  For the first time, with the heat of Brutal’s hand sinking like sunlight through Todd’s shirt, Todd felt like he’d found himself a place that might want him now.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone reading my other original story, "Instinctual," know that I haven't abandoned it! I'm just still tangled up with life right now, so it's going to be awhile before it gets updated :( Apologies for the extended hiatus. The next chapter _is_ started, at the very least. Consider this story an olive branch!


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